The Michael Knowles Show - February 08, 2020


Michael's Podcast Pick - The Cold War： What We Saw


Episode Stats

Length

12 minutes

Words per Minute

176.00066

Word Count

2,159

Sentence Count

117

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary

Thirty years ago, the Berlin Wall was torn down by the people that it had divided for three decades. It wasn t merely a wall between East and West, it was the division of humanity into two different camps, and since names and labels are always changing and morphing, let s reduce it to the most simple, emotionally neutral terms: on one side of the wall were the collectivists. On the other, were the individualists.


Transcript

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00:00:30.400 Back in July last year, I told you about this show, Apollo 11, What We Saw.
00:00:35.020 The host, our pal Bill Whittle, took you back in time
00:00:38.480 to what it was like to live through the space age
00:00:40.820 and one of the greatest endeavors of mankind, the moon landing.
00:00:44.620 And now Bill has hosted a new season of the show, The Cold War, What We Saw.
00:00:50.060 If you are a highfalutin scholarly academic or even just a plain old history buff,
00:00:54.900 then you will want to check it out.
00:00:56.940 Bill captures what it was like to live through major events
00:00:59.320 like the Berlin Airlift, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Space Race.
00:01:04.580 And the story ties all of these milestones together
00:01:07.140 to give us a clear picture of the apocalypse that never happened.
00:01:11.480 If you're close to my age, you weren't here for any of those events.
00:01:14.920 But the story is so well told and the setting is so brilliantly descriptive
00:01:18.420 that as you go through these events,
00:01:20.600 you start to understand the battle not only for economic freedom,
00:01:23.600 but for civilization itself.
00:01:26.420 They've already released two episodes of this 12-part series,
00:01:29.320 so you already have some to catch up on.
00:01:31.660 This is a perfect time to listen as the 2020 election starts to heat up
00:01:35.080 and we can see where the left has gone full-blown communist
00:01:38.220 in so many of their policies and in their language.
00:01:41.860 Take a listen to this 10-minute preview of episode 1.
00:01:44.480 And if you like what you hear, just go to dailywire.com slash coldwar
00:01:48.780 and start listening to this incredibly important story.
00:01:52.260 You can also find it on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:59.720 Thirty years ago, the Berlin Wall was torn down by the people
00:02:03.800 that it had divided for three decades.
00:02:07.000 Berliners were euphoric.
00:02:08.340 They were euphoric because the Berlin Wall was not merely a wall
00:02:11.820 between East and West Berlin.
00:02:13.500 It was the wall between East and West, period.
00:02:17.340 It was the division of humanity into two different camps.
00:02:20.640 And since names and labels are always changing and morphing,
00:02:23.520 not to mention carrying decades of emotional baggage,
00:02:26.500 let's reduce it to the most simple, emotionally neutral terms.
00:02:30.640 On one side of the wall, the Eastern side, were the collectivists,
00:02:34.360 who believe that society takes precedent over the person.
00:02:37.420 This collectivism was advertised as new and scientific,
00:02:40.540 but the fact is that collectivism has been the default condition of humanity
00:02:44.600 since humanity began.
00:02:46.600 No, the actual newcomer to this clash of visions
00:02:49.280 were the individualists on the Western side.
00:02:52.220 The first government in history dedicated to the idea
00:02:54.980 of the individual being more worthy of protection than the state
00:02:58.500 had just turned 170 years old when the 40-year conflict known as the Cold War began.
00:03:06.040 With the world in ruins after the defeat of Nazi Germany,
00:03:09.120 Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy,
00:03:11.500 these two ideologies had come into head-on conflict here in Berlin.
00:03:15.740 It quickly became evident that Soviet leaders were not interested
00:03:19.160 in a free, unified Germany
00:03:21.000 and were determined to induce or force the Western powers to leave Berlin.
00:03:27.240 Certainly, the American and Western people do not want war,
00:03:31.580 but all history has taught us the grim lesson
00:03:34.200 that no nation has ever been successful in avoiding the terrors of war
00:03:38.780 by refusing to defend its rights,
00:03:41.380 by attempting to placate aggression.
00:03:43.800 From the East, the collectivist idea known as Communism
00:03:47.060 had slugged its way for mile after bloody mile,
00:03:50.620 limping, then striding, and then running across Eastern Europe
00:03:54.540 from the Nazi high-water mark at Stalingrad.
00:03:58.320 The individualist ideology arrived by sea,
00:04:01.540 storming ashore on the beaches of Normandy,
00:04:03.740 and after being staggered once or twice,
00:04:06.020 was racing across Western Europe in a gasoline-fueled Red Ball Express.
00:04:11.520 Now, part of this idea was known as Capitalism,
00:04:13.460 but that was merely the economic system.
00:04:15.780 Politically, morally, economically, and practically,
00:04:19.380 these were called the forces of freedom
00:04:21.000 for the simple reason that that's what they were.
00:04:24.160 And as the collectivist nightmare known as German National Socialism
00:04:27.500 wavered, collapsed, and then imploded,
00:04:30.340 these two antithetical ideologies met in Berlin,
00:04:33.580 for it was in Berlin, where one world war had just ended,
00:04:37.280 that the next world war was about to begin.
00:04:39.460 Now, no one felt this divide more than the defeated Germans themselves.
00:04:44.880 To them, the wall, this war of ideologies,
00:04:47.980 had an immediacy not felt anywhere else.
00:04:50.820 The nation and former capital Berlin split in half,
00:04:54.080 one camp occupied by the armies of the Soviet Union
00:04:56.760 and the others by the armies of the United States,
00:05:00.320 Great Britain, and in a rather generous gesture, France.
00:05:03.500 There was nothing theoretical about the Berlin Wall.
00:05:07.660 It was cold, thick, high, and deadly,
00:05:11.100 and it was a daily reminder to those on both sides
00:05:13.800 of the sheer monumental luck,
00:05:16.940 the city block you lived on,
00:05:18.600 determining the fate of you,
00:05:19.960 your children, and their children.
00:05:22.240 No wonder they went at it with hammers and crowbars
00:05:24.880 and even bare and bloody hands.
00:05:26.500 But all of us who watched it happen
00:05:28.760 felt that giddy, euphoric, mind-boggling sensation
00:05:32.440 that had nothing to do with living in Berlin
00:05:35.080 or even in Germany.
00:05:35.980 In our top story,
00:05:37.700 the Iron Curtain between East Germany and West Berlin
00:05:40.340 has come tumbling down.
00:05:41.900 This has been a city physically divided for 28 years,
00:05:44.860 but now it's come together, East and West,
00:05:47.480 in a spontaneous outburst of emotion.
00:05:49.480 We all cried when the wall came down
00:05:56.040 because with it collapsed from our shoulders
00:05:58.580 the death sentence that we'd all been living under.
00:06:01.380 Because you cannot possibly understand
00:06:03.380 how the world could be locked
00:06:04.600 in a life-and-death struggle for half a century
00:06:06.660 unless you can put yourself in the position
00:06:08.440 of those of us who lived through it
00:06:10.240 or lived through any part of it.
00:06:12.500 You see, when the Berlin Wall fell,
00:06:14.080 it began to dawn on me
00:06:15.100 like it began to dawn on all of us.
00:06:17.220 There was going to be an actual future
00:06:19.300 and despite all odds,
00:06:21.200 we were going to live to see it.
00:06:23.160 And this is what we saw.
00:06:29.640 Today, in the world of freedom,
00:06:32.020 the proudest boast is
00:06:33.580 Ich bin ein B-Liter.
00:06:35.520 Iron Curtain has descended across the country.
00:06:38.040 The only answer to communism
00:06:39.800 is a massive offensive.
00:06:41.540 Communism must be a system
00:06:43.220 of international control and conformity.
00:06:45.400 You and I have a rendezvous with death.
00:06:47.120 Never give in.
00:06:48.060 Never, never, never.
00:06:49.300 Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
00:07:02.200 From Stettin in the Baltic
00:07:04.800 to Trieste in the Adriatic,
00:07:06.900 an iron curtain has descended
00:07:08.780 across the continent.
00:07:10.080 Behind that line
00:07:11.400 lie all the capitals
00:07:12.760 of the ancient states
00:07:14.000 of Central and Eastern Europe.
00:07:15.940 If you had grown up
00:07:19.700 during the Cold War
00:07:20.620 like I did,
00:07:21.620 then we both have something in common.
00:07:24.120 Didn't matter which side you were on
00:07:25.680 because what we all shared
00:07:26.980 was universal.
00:07:28.020 If you were a kid
00:07:28.860 when I was a kid,
00:07:30.080 the one thing you were pretty certain of
00:07:31.820 is that you were never going to get
00:07:33.240 to be an adult.
00:07:34.560 My dad was a hotel manager
00:07:35.980 and so I grew up in Bermuda.
00:07:37.820 That meant I never got subjected
00:07:39.520 to those civil defense films
00:07:41.060 that featured rows of bright-eyed
00:07:43.000 American kids at their school desks
00:07:44.660 who, an instant after
00:07:46.200 the brilliant flash of light
00:07:47.420 coming through the window,
00:07:48.700 would immediately
00:07:49.400 and automatically
00:07:50.360 duck beneath their desks
00:07:52.040 and cover their heads
00:07:53.040 with school books.
00:07:54.600 You remember.
00:07:55.680 Duck
00:07:56.020 and cover
00:07:57.200 I didn't have to deal
00:08:08.660 with Saturday tests
00:08:09.700 of the air raid siren
00:08:10.740 and I was nearly an adult
00:08:12.060 when I first saw training films
00:08:13.600 that showed what to do
00:08:14.780 if you were caught in the open
00:08:16.300 without time to get to a bomb shelter,
00:08:18.220 namely,
00:08:19.040 lying on the grass
00:08:19.980 and covering yourself
00:08:21.120 with a newspaper.
00:08:22.280 Now, I was old enough
00:08:23.060 by that time
00:08:23.720 to laugh off the absurdity
00:08:25.100 of using a newspaper
00:08:26.060 to protect you
00:08:26.760 from the heat flash
00:08:27.580 of a thermonuclear weapon
00:08:28.900 and I wasn't yet old enough
00:08:30.960 to realize that
00:08:31.700 wrapping yourself
00:08:32.340 with a newspaper
00:08:33.080 was, in fact,
00:08:34.600 excellent advice
00:08:35.360 as was duck and cover.
00:08:37.440 We'll get to all of that later.
00:08:39.560 I didn't have to deal
00:08:40.380 with any of that
00:08:41.100 since I was not going
00:08:42.020 to American public schools
00:08:43.360 in American suburbs
00:08:44.320 but rather attending
00:08:45.660 British public schools
00:08:46.760 while growing up
00:08:47.880 in one of the last
00:08:48.840 of the British colonies.
00:08:50.740 That nuclear war stuff
00:08:52.100 barely registered at all.
00:08:53.800 I was on an island
00:08:54.880 in the middle
00:08:55.480 of the Atlantic.
00:08:56.460 It all had nothing
00:08:57.380 to do with me.
00:08:58.780 Now, of course,
00:08:59.300 the fact that the
00:09:00.080 20-mile-long
00:09:01.180 fishhook-shaped island
00:09:02.540 that was my home
00:09:03.300 at the time
00:09:03.780 housed both
00:09:04.440 a United States
00:09:05.160 Air Force Base
00:09:05.920 at one end
00:09:06.460 and a United States
00:09:07.980 Naval Station
00:09:08.620 at the other,
00:09:09.380 well, that was all
00:09:09.840 far too theoretical
00:09:10.720 for me.
00:09:11.640 But surely,
00:09:12.660 it was not lost
00:09:13.440 on my parents
00:09:14.180 that if the nightmare
00:09:15.280 did come true,
00:09:16.620 that tiny island
00:09:17.500 and everything
00:09:18.420 and everyone on it
00:09:19.700 would soon become
00:09:20.800 radioactive dust
00:09:21.860 in the upper stratosphere.
00:09:23.340 Unlike millions
00:09:25.100 of other American kids
00:09:26.120 back in the suburbs
00:09:27.000 who, as a result
00:09:27.700 of good luck
00:09:28.280 or bad maybe,
00:09:30.160 were not within
00:09:30.940 the lethal blast radius
00:09:32.200 of multiple Soviet
00:09:33.420 thermonuclear warheads,
00:09:35.220 those of us
00:09:35.720 who grew up
00:09:36.200 on a beach in Bermuda
00:09:37.040 would not have had
00:09:38.240 even the slimmest chance.
00:09:41.980 You know,
00:09:42.500 many times a day
00:09:43.220 I get asked,
00:09:43.980 Bill, you suave
00:09:45.040 and handsome devil,
00:09:45.940 how is it that you
00:09:46.780 know so much
00:09:47.360 about everything?
00:09:48.060 And the answer
00:09:48.580 is very simple.
00:09:49.300 I have a very high
00:09:50.300 level of confidence
00:09:51.180 and a very low
00:09:52.140 level of awareness.
00:09:53.500 But there's some good news.
00:09:55.000 I had to spend
00:09:55.540 25 years poking around
00:09:56.800 trying to get
00:09:57.360 all this stuff together
00:09:58.200 and mostly I just
00:09:59.060 pretty much fake it
00:09:59.900 but you won't have to.
00:10:01.300 There's a streaming service
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00:10:10.820 there's subjects
00:10:11.260 like American presidents,
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00:10:20.240 Just as one example,
00:10:21.280 they've got a featured
00:10:21.920 course out now
00:10:22.640 called The Skeptic's Guide
00:10:23.880 to American History.
00:10:25.480 And if you've seen
00:10:26.160 what they've been doing
00:10:26.760 to history
00:10:27.220 in the public sector
00:10:28.140 out there,
00:10:28.680 it's about time
00:10:29.420 somebody asked questions
00:10:30.400 like,
00:10:30.940 was the Cold War inevitable?
00:10:32.820 Yes.
00:10:33.280 And you can get
00:10:33.980 all kinds of in-depth
00:10:34.980 objective understanding
00:10:36.020 about the past
00:10:36.680 and how it still
00:10:37.340 affects us today.
00:10:38.420 Now right now
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00:10:40.000 You can get that
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00:11:02.280 slash cold.
00:11:03.580 That's thegreatcoursesplus.com
00:11:05.800 slash cold.
00:11:07.560 A few years ago
00:11:08.640 I met a guy
00:11:09.200 who was about my age
00:11:10.260 which to my amazement
00:11:11.460 happens to be 60.
00:11:12.940 And like me
00:11:13.820 he was an American boy
00:11:14.820 growing up overseas
00:11:15.820 on an island.
00:11:17.420 Only he was an Air Force brat.
00:11:19.500 The island he grew up on
00:11:20.620 was Okinawa
00:11:21.240 and his father
00:11:22.400 was a B-52 pilot
00:11:23.700 based at Kadena Air Force Base.
00:11:27.180 He told me
00:11:27.960 how he and his family
00:11:28.840 would go to see movies
00:11:29.700 at the base
00:11:30.220 just like any other family.
00:11:31.740 Dad and Mom
00:11:32.520 and the kids
00:11:33.060 and the popcorn
00:11:33.700 and the sodas
00:11:34.480 and the good,
00:11:35.420 the bad and the ugly
00:11:36.140 up there on the screen.
00:11:37.260 But every now and then
00:11:38.120 in the middle of a Saturday
00:11:39.280 afternoon double feature
00:11:40.360 let's say
00:11:40.860 all of a sudden
00:11:41.980 two huge red signs
00:11:43.940 labeled ALERT
00:11:44.820 would suddenly light up
00:11:46.320 on either side
00:11:47.200 of the screen.
00:11:49.740 And before you even
00:11:50.740 had a chance
00:11:51.300 to look around
00:11:52.020 the movie had stopped
00:11:53.100 the lights had come up
00:11:54.340 and every grown man
00:11:55.840 in the audience
00:11:56.480 was climbing over
00:11:57.380 the rows of seats
00:11:58.260 carefully pushing aside
00:11:59.640 women and children
00:12:00.320 and running like hell
00:12:01.720 for the exits.
00:12:02.400 Just go to
00:12:05.580 dailywire.com
00:12:06.580 slash cold war
00:12:07.480 and start listening
00:12:08.560 to this incredibly
00:12:09.620 important story.
00:12:11.000 You can also find it
00:12:11.800 on iTunes,
00:12:12.760 Spotify,
00:12:13.480 YouTube
00:12:13.800 or wherever you
00:12:15.060 get your podcasts.